Development Update - 21.03.2026

Hey everyone!

The dust is finally settling after the release, and I’m fully back in work mode!

The first animations are already rendered, the first images are done, and the first scenes are implemented into the game. It feels really good to be moving forward again. I’ve also been going through all your comments, questions, feedback, and reviews and I just want to say thank you. The amount of support and engagement around this update has been incredible.

And we’ve hit something huge…
1500 patrons.
That’s a milestone we’ve never reached before. Seriously, thank you to every single one of you for being part of this community. Because of you, we can keep investing more time and resources into Race of Life and keep pushing the quality further. It means a lot.

I’ve seen a few questions about releases outside Patreon, so here’s a quick update:

• itch.io - the game will be uploaded as soon as we get the green light. There were some issues with the tax form submission, but thankfully it’s now sorted, I’m just waiting for final approval. As soon as that’s done, I’ll upload the update there.

• Steam - as mentioned before, this update will be released as Race of Life Act 2 (Episodes 4, 5 & 6 combined) once everything is ready.
  👉 Don’t forget to wishlist: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3942590/Race_of_Life__Act_2/

• GOG - I reached out to them a few months ago about getting the game on their platform, but unfortunately didn’t get a response.
  However, thanks to one of you, I found out about the GOG Dreamlist, where you can vote for games you’d like to see there. Race of Life is already listed, so if you’d like to see it on GOG, I’d really appreciate your vote:
  👉 https://www.gog.com/dreamlist/game/race-of-life-2022

We’re also starting work on the extra scene for Episode 5! If you haven’t voted yet on how it should look, make sure to check out the post here and leave your vote 🙂 https://www.patreon.com/posts/race-of-life-5-1-153577162?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

For the past few days, I’ve been focusing on improving skin colors and textures in Blender, where the animations are currently being made.

Some of you noticed that characters in animations look slightly different compared to the rendered images and you’re absolutely right. I see it too, and I’m actively working on reducing that difference. The goal is to make characters look more realistic and less “plastic.”

Because of the support from this release, I was also able to invest in professional rigging for the characters. This gives much better control over the body and allows for more realistic movement and animations.

However… it also comes with trade-offs.

Rigged characters can have:

• slightly different skin tones

• small changes in proportions

• subtle differences in hair and overall look

So right now I’m facing a bit of a dilemma:
On one hand - animations look smoother, more dynamic, with better movement and physics.
On the other - the characters can feel slightly different from their original look.

I’m still testing and figuring out the best approach, and I’ll definitely keep you updated in future posts. There’s no perfect solution yet, but I’m working hard to find the best balance.

As I mentioned before the release, for this update I’m prioritizing getting animations done first, so I have enough time later to polish, improve, and render everything at the highest quality possible.

That’s it from me for now!

I’m really curious what you think - especially about the animation vs. visual consistency topic. I know this update got a bit more technical than usual, but I hope you enjoy seeing this side of development too.

Now a few words from Joshua 🙂

Well, by now, you guys have all had a chance to play episode 4. We’ve gotten a lot of feedback, some assurances of what we’re doing well, some concerns about what we can improve on, and a whole lot of everything in between.

It’s all useful, and believe me, we read it all. We can’t always implement everything, but we do take it into account where we can.

Now, on to episode 5.

As a two-person team, the split in responsibilities means that I can start the script for the new episode while Jachu is coding, rendering and animating, so I’ve actually been writing episode 5 for quite a while now.

I’m sitting on about 65K words. I expect it’ll go to about 100K by the time it’s finished, but the important scenes are done, and I’ve got detailed outlines for everything else in the scene. I think I’m about 3-4 weeks away from a complete first draft. After that, we’ll run it through our beta readers, where they can tell me where I fucked up, and I’ll go about fixing it.

As the story moves into the later episodes, the script necessarily gets ‘wider’ to accommodate the different paths. It means making sure the player choices are reflected in the game experience, so if you’re stringing along multiple girls and they find out, they’ll react in a way you’d expect. Some will be mad, some will be unconcerned, and some will pretend to be one while really feeling the other. Love is complicated.

It does mean the linear story may seem shorter, but I think it makes for a better overall experience, especially for players who like to have multiple playthroughs.

But, it’s not going to be a short episode either. There should be enough length to satisfy everyone (if you know what I mean).

So, I’ll get back at it, and do my best to bring you the next episode as soon as possible.

Thanks again to our beta team for all their help with the last episode, and to everyone who has shared their thoughts on the game so far.

Oh, and as we did last year, if you want to drop into the Discord channel when the Formula 1 is on and have a chat, feel free. There are usually a few of us in there. https://discord.com/invite/gWJFusZTyP

Have a great one!